731 



to know, that the verdant tint was not owing to a profuse development 

 of the mere immaturities of the vegetable kingdom, — crisp, slow- 

 growing lichens, or watery spore-propagated fungi that shoot up to 

 their full size in a night, — nor even to an abundance of the more 

 highly organized families of the liver-worts and the mosses. These 

 may have abounded then, as now ; though we have not a shadow of 

 evidence that they did. But while we have no proof whatever of their 

 existence, we have conclusive proof that there existed orders and fa- 

 milies of a rank far above them. On the dry land of the Lower Old 

 Red Sandstone, on which, according to the theory of Adolphe Brong- 

 niart, nothing higher than a lichen or a moss could have been ex- 

 pected, the ship-carpenter might have hopefully taken axe in hand, 

 to explore the woods for some such stately pine as the one described 



by Milton, — 



' Hewn on Norwegian bills, to be tbe mast 

 Of some great admiral.' " 

 —p. 200. 



The concluding chapter of the volume, that on " Final Causes — 

 Their Bearing on Geologic History," appropriately commences with 

 Cuvier's observation, that " Natural History has a principle on which 

 to reason, which is peculiar to it, and which it employs advantage- 

 ously on many occasions : it is that of the conditions of existence, 

 commonly termed final causes.'''' In amplifying on these words, the 

 author well remarks that " in Geology, which is Natural History ex- 

 tended over all ages, this principle has a still wider scope, — embrac- 

 ing not merely the characteristics and conditions of the beings which 

 now exist, but of all, so far as we can learn regarding them, which 

 have ever existed, — and involving the consideration of not merely 

 their peculiarities as races placed before us without relation to time, 

 but also of the history of their rise, increase, decline, and extinction." 

 To rise, increase, decline, and finally to become extinct, seems to be 

 the lot of all created beings — " all bear the stamp of death, — indivi- 

 duals, — nations, — species." Geology makes us acquainted with the 

 fact, that " in the course of creation the higher orders succeeded the 

 lower," but this succession was one of order, not of development ; 

 a higher order of animated organisms would appear to have been suc- 

 cessively called into being so soon as the earth became fitted for its 

 reception ; and " it is in the style and character of the dwelling-place 

 that gradual improvement seems to have taken place, — not in the 

 functions or the ranks of any class of its inhabitants ; and it is with 

 special reference to this gradual improvement in our common man- 



